TV Series

HOSTAGES (Bnei Aruba)

2013,  1st Season 10 episodes,  40 minutes per episode

Creators, Scriptwriters and Directors: Omri Givon and Rotem Shamir

Producer: Chaim Sharir

Produced for Channel 10

Cast: Ayelet Zurer, Yair Lotan, Dar Zozovsky, Yoav Rothman,  Micha Selectar, Miki Leon, Hila Vidor, Tomer Kapon, Ido Bartal, Nevo Kimchi, Shmil Ben Ari

After the family of a chief medical surgeon is kidnapped, the surgeon faces a dire dilemma: if she wants to keep her family alive she has to kill the Prime Minister during a routine surgery…

The Danon family live in a large cozy house in Jerusalem. Each member struggles with internal and external conflicts, trying to safeguard their deepest secrets. A typical family. 

Yael, the mother of the family and the main character of the series, is a brilliant surgeon, who has been selected to operate on Shmuel Raskin, the current Prime Minister of Israel. It's a relatively simple surgery to perform.

The night before the surgery, four masked men break into the Danon house and holding her family at gunpoint, give Yael a horrifying ultimatum- either she kills the Prime Minister tomorrow during the surgery, or they will kill her family.  Yael manages to delay the surgery by four days – four long days in which the kidnappers and hostages are ensnared in the nerve-racking space of the Danon house.

The Danon family and the four kidnapers are forced to spend an intense and intriguingly time together. For the Danon family, this experience turns into a journey of family redemption- secrets from the past are revealed while relationships fall apart and, in turn, are rebuilt. The kidnappers too are gradually exposed as the story progresses. Both their physical and metaphorical masks are stripped away, and the eight characters in the Danon household are caught in a web of emotional intrigues:  they defy each other but are drawn to one another.     

As the show progresses, we find out that the assassination of the prime minister is merely a small part of a larger conspiracy. The mysterious agency that hired the four kidnapers to execute the mission is gradually revealed by Yael's unrelenting efforts to try and find out who wants to kill Prime Minister and she will stop at nothing to protect her family while trying to prevent the assassination.

By the end of season one, we will find out the reason behind the attempted assassination and the motivation of the conspirators responsible for the murderous transgression. As season one comes to an end, a new group of heroes emerge from the grueling hostage situation.

The series was sold and broadcast in many countries abroad, among those the French Canal +, and BBC 4 in the UK.

The series scripts have been purchased and produces for a U.S. series called "Hostages" in collaboration with Alon Arania by Warner for CBS.

With the assistance of the Jerusalem Film &Television Fund

>> IMBD page

Winner of the Golden Umbrella Award for Best Crime Series in Mediamixx Festival 2017

>> www.mediamixx.info/goldenumbrella

HOSTAGES  2 (Bnei Aruba 2)

2016, 2nd Season 12 episodes, 40 minutes per episode

Creators, Scriptwriters and Directors: Omri Givon and Rotem Shamir

Producers: Chaim Sharir, Pascal Breton, Jean-Michel Ciszewski

Produced for Channel 10 and Canal+

Cast: Yair Lotan, Yoav Levi, Tomer Kapun, Miki Leon, Hila Vidor, Itai Tiran, Reimond Amsalem, Nevo Kimchi, Alona Tal, Shmil Ben Ari, Kim Bodnia, Jacob Daniel, Michal Kalman

While the whole country prepares for the official funeral of Prime-Minister Shmuel Netser, his kidnappers are preparing to smuggle him out of the country to perform the bone marrow transplant that will save the life of Neta, Adam's wife, and Netser's daughter out of wedlock Giora, a former Secret Service agent who now works for the tycoon who financed the assassination attempt on Netser's life, is determined to have him killed in order not to lose the huge deal about to be signed if Netser doesn't stand in the way.

When Giora manages to find the location of the group, they escape and entrench themselves in an abandoned Yeshiva building on the outskirts of town, surrounded by large police forces.

Adam conducts negotiations with the police negotiation experts.

 Anxieties, guilt, moral dilemmas and provocations serve as a fertile backdrop for conflicts between the kidnappers and the captives, while the event become a media focal point.

Zohar, a young and ambitious Secret Service investigator, discover that the corporation brought a foreign hit man to assassinate the British Prime Minister who as expected has come to the Israeli Prime Minister's funeral, and while she tries to locate him, the corporation  kidnaps Adam's daughter and gives him a horrifying ultimatum – Prime Minister life for his daughter's life. Ironically, Adam and the corporation's goals are the same: they both want to get Netser out of the compound, Adam faces an impossible dilemma between his daughter's life and crossing an irreversible moral red line.

The series was sold to broadcasting by Netflix 

Co-produced with Federation Entertainment

>> IMBD page

Winner of the Golden Umbrella Award for Best Crime Series in Mediamixx Festival 2017

>> www.mediamixx.info/goldenumbrella